Firstly, I'm surprised that there isn't a prot aoe sticky at the top of this forum. I've been hunting around different sites to try and find some advice.
Mostly, when gearing for Prot AoE, I want lots of Stam and Int with a taste of Agi...right? I figured I should throw Str out the window in favor of Agi.
The of course comes the builds. I have an idea of what I need to do, but I was wondering... Anticipation vs Precision vs Benediction.
All help welcome
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When AOE grinding your primary concerns are dealing as much damage as possible to the units around you while surviving long enough to kill them. There are a lot of factors to think of. First, stacking any avoidance that isn't block is undesirable. Agi builds Dodge, and if you dodge, you deal no reactive damage. When AOEing, you want to porcupine as much as possible. Holy Shield should be up pretty much constantly, because it'll be blown down in a few seconds. Consecrate should be used as often as possible without burning out of mana.
Because you want reactive damage, you should stack as much Stamina as possible (and this is good advice for any pally tank, because for a raid build reactive damage = reactive threat) and of course spell damage. Your primary damage sources will be block damage (Holy Shield and shield spikes) and consecrate. Both of them obviously benefit from spell damage. This means that you don't need Precision; you should however take Anticipation, since it's regarded as mandatory for paladin tanks. Retribution Aura should be used. It doesn't benefit from spell damage, but that little damage it does do adds up over time.
Apart from killing everything you're tanking, you also need to be concerned with surviving. There are a couple of ways to do this. You will always be bubbling to get heals off, and bubble/bandage is usually more desirable since it conserves mana. Judging Seal of Light and activating Seal of Wisdom, or vice versa depending on your preference, will keep you topped up over the course of the fight. Using SoV or SoR does deal more damage, but it drains your mana too quickly. If you have an avoidance trinket, you can pop that when you get near low health.
You should usually pull with a mount and ensure that the types of mobs you're pulling don't include casters and/or healers. The ideal targets are numerous fast-attacking melee units. Casters can't be pulled into the range of your Consecrate and don't take any reflective damage, meaning you have to knock them down with SoV, and healers can prolong the fight far longer than you want.
My personal method is to spam Consecrate as much as possible. People don't like doing that because it does drain your mana very, very quickly, but Consecrate is useful in that it completely ignores the number of people you're fighting, unlike Holy Shield, which has only eight charges. Everyone standing in the consecrate radius, whether there's ten or twenty, will be taking damage. If you can stack your spell damage to the point where you can kill a mob solely with Consecrate, your only issue is keeping your mana bar up so that you can keep casting it.
Some very useful talents for AOE grinding that are often left out of raid builds include Ardent Defender, which is an obvious choice because you'll be hanging at ~35% for a long time, and Reckoning, which is left out of raiding for avoidance reasons but is pivotal when AOE grinding since it means you get more health and mana back from SoL and SoW. With practice you can get it to the point where you're literally tanking entire rooms of mobs. If it weren't for the fact that you can't ride your mount into it, I could probably take down three cavern's worth of Nethermine Flayers in one pull. There are players on the board who AOE the starting section of Black Morass. There's really no limit.
Because you want reactive damage, you should stack as much Stamina as possible (and this is good advice for any pally tank, because for a raid build reactive damage = reactive threat) and of course spell damage. Your primary damage sources will be block damage (Holy Shield and shield spikes) and consecrate. Both of them obviously benefit from spell damage. This means that you don't need Precision; you should however take Anticipation, since it's regarded as mandatory for paladin tanks. Retribution Aura should be used. It doesn't benefit from spell damage, but that little damage it does do adds up over time.
Apart from killing everything you're tanking, you also need to be concerned with surviving. There are a couple of ways to do this. You will always be bubbling to get heals off, and bubble/bandage is usually more desirable since it conserves mana. Judging Seal of Light and activating Seal of Wisdom, or vice versa depending on your preference, will keep you topped up over the course of the fight. Using SoV or SoR does deal more damage, but it drains your mana too quickly. If you have an avoidance trinket, you can pop that when you get near low health.
You should usually pull with a mount and ensure that the types of mobs you're pulling don't include casters and/or healers. The ideal targets are numerous fast-attacking melee units. Casters can't be pulled into the range of your Consecrate and don't take any reflective damage, meaning you have to knock them down with SoV, and healers can prolong the fight far longer than you want.
My personal method is to spam Consecrate as much as possible. People don't like doing that because it does drain your mana very, very quickly, but Consecrate is useful in that it completely ignores the number of people you're fighting, unlike Holy Shield, which has only eight charges. Everyone standing in the consecrate radius, whether there's ten or twenty, will be taking damage. If you can stack your spell damage to the point where you can kill a mob solely with Consecrate, your only issue is keeping your mana bar up so that you can keep casting it.
Some very useful talents for AOE grinding that are often left out of raid builds include Ardent Defender, which is an obvious choice because you'll be hanging at ~35% for a long time, and Reckoning, which is left out of raiding for avoidance reasons but is pivotal when AOE grinding since it means you get more health and mana back from SoL and SoW. With practice you can get it to the point where you're literally tanking entire rooms of mobs. If it weren't for the fact that you can't ride your mount into it, I could probably take down three cavern's worth of Nethermine Flayers in one pull. There are players on the board who AOE the starting section of Black Morass. There's really no limit.
I would say that you want a decent combination of all.
Def to remove the possibility of crits and for the passive dodge/parry/block increases
Stam to keep you alive
Decent avoidance - dodge/parry/block
Int for a reasonable mana pool
Spell damage for damaging the baddies!
Talents/Abilities (Prot)
Redoubt and shield specialisation for teh additional mitigation
Toughness for additional mitigation
Imp rigteous fury for the -6% damage
Reckoning for the additional damage you can do.
BoSanc, holy shield and imp holy shield for the avoiudance and damage.
Sacred duty for the stam increase
Ardent defender for the further mitigation
Combat expertise for the +10% stam.
Talents/Abilities (Ret)
Benedition to help mana last
Deflection for additional parry
Improved Judgements for the improvement to your judgements :)
And anything else to get 2/2 imp ret aura.
A build I use to grind is approximately:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZVhxIh0zgMqtVbxzbb
Thats my 2c worth :)
Def to remove the possibility of crits and for the passive dodge/parry/block increases
Stam to keep you alive
Decent avoidance - dodge/parry/block
Int for a reasonable mana pool
Spell damage for damaging the baddies!
Talents/Abilities (Prot)
Redoubt and shield specialisation for teh additional mitigation
Toughness for additional mitigation
Imp rigteous fury for the -6% damage
Reckoning for the additional damage you can do.
BoSanc, holy shield and imp holy shield for the avoiudance and damage.
Sacred duty for the stam increase
Ardent defender for the further mitigation
Combat expertise for the +10% stam.
Talents/Abilities (Ret)
Benedition to help mana last
Deflection for additional parry
Improved Judgements for the improvement to your judgements :)
And anything else to get 2/2 imp ret aura.
A build I use to grind is approximately:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZVhxIh0zgMqtVbxzbb
Thats my 2c worth :)
Zepoodle obviously has had far more coffee then me this morning, good explanation and typed v quick! 5/5 improved typeing eh?
SamwiseTheBrave wrote:
A build I use to grind is approximately:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZVhxIh0zgMqtVbxzbb
While you're definitely on the right track here, by moving down Ret into Imp. Ret Aura, you're skipping out on One-Handed Weapon Specialization. The reason why this talent is awesome, and it wasn't apparent to me immediately either, is that it increases all damage done, not just white damage or even melee damage. That's 5% extra damage and extra threat, straight up, on every ability you use. It's simply amazing, and it outweighs the benefit of 50% extra damage from Ret Aura.
Imp. Ret Aura is a confusingly useless talent, as it's too far down in the Retribution tree to be viable, and immediately after it is Sanctity Aura, which is infinitely more useful for tankadins. If it was second/first tier Ret it would be a definite choice. The expansion plans to revise Imp. Retribution Aura as a more effective DPS aura rather than as reactive threat, so soon it won't even be for tanks any more.
It’s easy to do.
1. You don’t have to specially gear for it to do it. Having great gear will make it faster/easier, but you don’t have to stack stamina to have a shot… You can do it with regular greens.
2. You need Ret Aura (Reg. not improved), Blessing of Sanctuary, Imp. Righteousness, and a shield spike (The bigger the better, but don’t waste your $$$). Holy Shield is a good boost, but not a “Must haveâ€. Your gear should be plate, your goal is to have a ton of survivability with little avoidance. Do not be tempted to grab that piece of mail with +Attack power… Just get some plate…
Run into a group of non-caster mobs. Round up 3 to 4. (I can do 10 now, but start small – your ability to take on mobs will be a combination of experience, mob choice, and relative level to you…)
When you get them, drop a Consecration, followed by Blessing yourself with +Health, Judge that against your first mob. Then re-bless yourself (With either +Health or +Mana)
When the first mob dies, I target the next highest HP mob, rinse and repeat my judgments. Why? Because the judgment will last longer. If you judge the lowest health mob, you’ll end up killing it quicker, thus casting more often, thus using more mana.
The idea behind AOE tanking is to let them kill themselves. You don’t need to spam judgments.
Just be ready to Bubble and heal yourself if needed. Worst case scenario, LoH…. Other than that – have fun.
1. You don’t have to specially gear for it to do it. Having great gear will make it faster/easier, but you don’t have to stack stamina to have a shot… You can do it with regular greens.
2. You need Ret Aura (Reg. not improved), Blessing of Sanctuary, Imp. Righteousness, and a shield spike (The bigger the better, but don’t waste your $$$). Holy Shield is a good boost, but not a “Must haveâ€. Your gear should be plate, your goal is to have a ton of survivability with little avoidance. Do not be tempted to grab that piece of mail with +Attack power… Just get some plate…
Run into a group of non-caster mobs. Round up 3 to 4. (I can do 10 now, but start small – your ability to take on mobs will be a combination of experience, mob choice, and relative level to you…)
When you get them, drop a Consecration, followed by Blessing yourself with +Health, Judge that against your first mob. Then re-bless yourself (With either +Health or +Mana)
When the first mob dies, I target the next highest HP mob, rinse and repeat my judgments. Why? Because the judgment will last longer. If you judge the lowest health mob, you’ll end up killing it quicker, thus casting more often, thus using more mana.
The idea behind AOE tanking is to let them kill themselves. You don’t need to spam judgments.
Just be ready to Bubble and heal yourself if needed. Worst case scenario, LoH…. Other than that – have fun.
Use this spec
Gear for block value, block rating and spell dam, need 475def to avoid being dazed while kiting mobs to pick up enough to aoe down. As soon as you can, run shattered halls for the trinket. This will allow you to never have to bubble and you can use wings instead to burn down your targets very quickly.
You want ret aura on, blessing of sanc, righteous fury, and a shield spike on a decent shield(one that has the most bv you can find, i have 2 za shields, use 1 for aoe grinding, 1 for raid tanking). You can also use earthen elixir if you are short on block value. Your goal is to have enough block value so that you take 0 dam from whatever mobs you are planning on aoeing when you block. Once you have that amount, you don't need anymore and need to stack spell dam from that point.
Once you have as many as you can find or as many as you care to fight, pop holy shield and spam max rank consecrate, if/when you get low on health pop trinket and holy shield at the same time. I'm usually below 5k hp from kiting 30-50 mobs so i pop wings+consecrate+spell dam trinket+block/heal trinket+holy shield at the start and then spam holy shield and consecrate till they die, usually about 4-5 consecrates. I judge righteous when wings are up, but after that i just beat on 1 with SoR.
My mobs of choice are the zaxxis raiders just south of area 52 at The Heap. They hit for aprox 400 dam on plate, so 325-350 block value + BoSanc will get you to 0 dam taken when blocking. With no one around i can round up every single one(52 is most i've counted) and kill them in 1 pull while ending at 10k hp thanks to that trinket.
Edited, Aug 18th 2008 7:29pm by mahlerite
It occurred to me that i left out one of the tricks of aoe grinding. Rank 1 consecrate. Using a rank 1 consecrate every cd making sure all the mobs following you run thru it will ensure that the mobs you are kiting do not just run away after 15-20sec. This is also why you need PoJ, to stay in front of the pack. Using this method you can kite a very large grp almost indefinitely. Also works nicely for taking care of opposing farmers if they happen to be using aoe. Nothing like running your 30mobs into their aoe and bubble'ing, of course you'll need to be ready to burn down the pack as soon as the farmer dies.
Edited, Aug 19th 2008 3:30pm by mahlerite
Gear for block value, block rating and spell dam, need 475def to avoid being dazed while kiting mobs to pick up enough to aoe down. As soon as you can, run shattered halls for the trinket. This will allow you to never have to bubble and you can use wings instead to burn down your targets very quickly.
You want ret aura on, blessing of sanc, righteous fury, and a shield spike on a decent shield(one that has the most bv you can find, i have 2 za shields, use 1 for aoe grinding, 1 for raid tanking). You can also use earthen elixir if you are short on block value. Your goal is to have enough block value so that you take 0 dam from whatever mobs you are planning on aoeing when you block. Once you have that amount, you don't need anymore and need to stack spell dam from that point.
Once you have as many as you can find or as many as you care to fight, pop holy shield and spam max rank consecrate, if/when you get low on health pop trinket and holy shield at the same time. I'm usually below 5k hp from kiting 30-50 mobs so i pop wings+consecrate+spell dam trinket+block/heal trinket+holy shield at the start and then spam holy shield and consecrate till they die, usually about 4-5 consecrates. I judge righteous when wings are up, but after that i just beat on 1 with SoR.
My mobs of choice are the zaxxis raiders just south of area 52 at The Heap. They hit for aprox 400 dam on plate, so 325-350 block value + BoSanc will get you to 0 dam taken when blocking. With no one around i can round up every single one(52 is most i've counted) and kill them in 1 pull while ending at 10k hp thanks to that trinket.
Edited, Aug 18th 2008 7:29pm by mahlerite
It occurred to me that i left out one of the tricks of aoe grinding. Rank 1 consecrate. Using a rank 1 consecrate every cd making sure all the mobs following you run thru it will ensure that the mobs you are kiting do not just run away after 15-20sec. This is also why you need PoJ, to stay in front of the pack. Using this method you can kite a very large grp almost indefinitely. Also works nicely for taking care of opposing farmers if they happen to be using aoe. Nothing like running your 30mobs into their aoe and bubble'ing, of course you'll need to be ready to burn down the pack as soon as the farmer dies.
Edited, Aug 19th 2008 3:30pm by mahlerite
Thanks for all the help everyone. I esp. liked zepoodle's very detailed post.
/bump
/bump
Scholar
32 posts
A good source of info can be found on WoWWiki. That's where I got all of the info I needed to start and spend my talent points. It even gives good advice on where you can AOE grind for hours.
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